The primary reason behind setting up the conference is because we are in the business of Big Data, and more specifically we work closely with Apache Cassandra. One of the project committers, Eric Evans, is working with us. He is also the primary developer of the Cassandra Query Language. Being based in Europe we have noted difficulty in catering for the European community due to the sheer scale of US-centric activities dominating the scene. It is valuable to many prospective users of Cassandra to be able to listen to what others have done with it, and learn more about the technical details surrounding Cassandra. With our two tracks – Case Studies and Cassandra 101 – we provide attendees an opportunity to do exactly that. This will ultimately allow attendees to either better use Cassandra or ascertain the suitability of it towards their own use case. The fact that we’ve secured industry veterans from across the world, should not only make the conference being based in London more accessible to the European community, but also that bit more special.

For over a year we have been supporting the local community through sponsoring regular meetups like Cassandra London and organising Big Data London. In spite of this, demand for such a conference has been evident and so we’re extremely pleased to be able to organise it (and perhaps break the US stronghold). Considering this is our first edition, I believe we’ve been very lucky to secure the quality of speakers we’re seeing – Netflix, Spotify, Rackspace and many more. Attendees are also flocking from all across Europe (from Russia, Lithuania and Sweden, to France, Spain and Germany) and are representing a huge cross section of industries: from the financial services to media and tech. The global community is clearly excited as well, with the message even reaching New Zealand. We’ve also teamed up with Berlin Buzzwords to provide benefits and discounts for attendees of both conferences. It’s looking great. The reaction so far has been brilliant so naturally we’ll be hoping to make this a regular conference that will grow over the years.